Airlines Are Finally Cracking Down on Drunk, Unruly Passengers

Tony Tyler, IATA CEO. Image: Osama Faisal/AP

At a major aviation conference this week, executives took a break from cutting giant cakes with scimitars and watching pop stars like Kylie Minogue to address a serious problem: Drunk passengers are costing them a lot of money.

Between 2010 and 2013, airlines reported 20,000 unruly passenger incidents, including 8,000 in 2013 alone. In-air offenses range from “physical assault” to “failing to follow lawful crew instructions,” which we imagine includes things refusing to raise one’s seat back and tray table during takeoff and landing. Also mentioned: “consumption of illegal narcotics, sexual harassment, and physical or verbal confrontation or threats.”

Airlines like to err on the side of caution, so it doesn’t take much to convince them to divert a flight and make an emergency landing. That’s a pain for the passengers who suffer through flying in considerate silence, and it’s expensive for the airlines.

More often than not, alcohol is behind bad behavior. In a 2011 report, the International Air Transport Association said “two intoxicated business executives” physically and verbally abused the crew and passengers so severely that the plane had to be rerouted off its transpacific flight path. The airline estimated the incident cost about $200,000. (The Association doesn’t provide the cumulative price of these incidents, but says each can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.)

The global airline industry is expected to clear a net profit margin of just 2.4 percent (worth $18 billion) in 2014, so any way to cut costs piques interest. That’s the impetus for a set of proposed policy changes that will make it easier to keep passengers from getting out of hand, and to prosecute them when they do. The fact that the Association titled its latest report “The Devil in our Midst” indicates they’re taking this pretty seriously.

The current protocols for dealing with the problem are frustratingly vague. One guideline says “it is important to distinguish behavior that may simply be a person’s personality trait from behavior that might be a result of cultural background rather than unruly behavior.” That’s a good point, but it doesn’t help a flight attendant decide when to cut off the booze.

The proposed policy changes are formally known as the Montreal Protocol 2014 and were announced at the International Air Transport Association’s General Meeting in Doha, Qatar this week. The Association represents 240 airlines, and says they have “unanimously adopted a resolution that calls on governments and industry” to cooperate.

The plan’s focus is to have airport staff monitor passengers for intoxication and/or volatility from check-in to security and give waitstaff more power to refuse service. It wants to extend the right to prosecute offenses to the flight’s destination country. The current, outdated rules assign jurisdiction to the country where the aircraft is registered. These days, airlines commonly lease planes, so an aircraft may be registered in a country it never flies to. That creates a gaping loophole for badly behaved travelers. Tony Tyler, the Association’s CEO, told USA Today, “There are so many cases where people do egregious things. Police might come and detain them when they arrive, but in most cases they go (free).”

In one spectacular example, a passenger on an Icelandair flight got so drunk and out of control, the flight crew used duct tape to keep him in his seat. He allegedly grabbed women, choked other passengers, and spat on people, but was not prosecuted.

The next step for the Montreal Protocol 2014 is ratification by government representatives, airlines, and airports. So if the bartender at the airport Chili’s doesn’t serve you a second cadillac margarita, don’t take it personally.